If everyone except for Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden dropped out of the 2020 race right now, Democrats would still be hopelessly split

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If everyone except for Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden dropped out of the 2020 race right now, Democrats would still be hopelessly split
joe biden bernie sanders

REUTERS/Carlos Barria; REUTERS/Sam Wolfe

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Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders.

  • Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are far ahead of the pack in the 2020 Democratic presidential race.
  • But there are still have 10 other candidates crowing the polls.
  • We ran a polling model that analyzed what would happen if everyone else dropped out.
  • The results show that it'd be a tossup. Neither the moderate or progressive "lane" of the Democratic party would give either candidate a clear path to victory.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As the Iowa caucuses approach on February 3, two candidates have distinguished themselves as the leaders in the 2020 democratic presidential race.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders lead in both Iowa and national polls by significant margins. In the latest polling averages, the two are at 21% and 24.2% in Iowa respectively, and 28.1% and 23.8% nationally. The two candidates also lead in other major states that hold primary elections soon afterward - New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina - although other candidates hold closer third-place positions in those races.

Yet while Biden and Bernie lead, there are still a total of 12 nominees in the race. Some have lost support in recent weeks but remain popular, like Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. Some have surged, like Michael Bloomberg.

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All of them, as of now, are significantly less likely to cinch the nomination than Biden or Bernie. But by remaining in the race, they crowd out the two leading contenders against President Donald Trump in the general election.

So: What if we just got rid of them?

If only Bernie and Biden remained in the race, would there be a clear winner?

Thanks to the unique way Insider conducts its polls, we can test that.

joe biden bernie sanders debate

REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

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Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidates former Vice President Joe Biden greets Senator Bernie Sanders at a presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa.

Unlike with other polling methods, Insider/Surveymonkey's poll asks intended primary voters which candidates they would be "satisfied" or "unsatisfied" with if they were to become president, rather than asking them to name a single candidate. Using that data, we ran a model that analyzed what it would look like if we eliminated every candidate except for the top two and re-allocated those voters to Biden and Sanders, based on the seven most recent surveys we ran on SurveyMonkey Audience, which ranged from mid-November to late January.

If all of the other candidates - Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Tom Steyer, Deval Patrick, John Delaney, and Michael Bennett - all dropped out of the presidential race today, here's what the polls would look like, according to Insider's data.

  • 24% of primary voters would be happy with Bernie Sanders as the nominee, but would not be satisfied with Biden.
  • 22% would be happy with Joe Biden as the nominee, but would not be satisfied with Sanders.
  • 24% of them would be fine with either candidate as the nominee.
  • 30% wouldn't be satisfied with either of them as the nominee.

Basically, there's still no clear winner

If you thought the Democratic primary was nasty now, it'd get even worse in a two-way Biden-Bernie race.

Democrats still wouldn't have a clear nominee. It'd be a tossup. Both candidates have their diehard fans, but those numbers are roughly even - 22% and 24% for Bernie and Biden respectively.

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Neither of them, in current polls, would have a clear path to consolidating party support.

These results also muddle the narrative that Biden or Bernie are substantially hobbled by other candidates in their "lanes."

Bernie Sanders Jan 24Business Insider

Even if other voters were to switch to Bernie Sanders, he still won't have a clear path to the nomination.

As the narrative goes, there are two main "lanes" in the Democratic primary. There are moderates, of which the leading candidate is Biden. And there are progressives, of which the leading candidate is Bernie. Weaker moderate candidates, like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, are supposedly crowding out votes that would otherwise go to Biden, therefore giving Bernie and edge. And progressive candidates, mainly Warren, are taking away voters who would otherwise go to Bernie, giving Biden an edge.

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The primary's weird delegate selection process - particularly in Iowa - requires candidates to receive 15% of the vote in a state to get any delegates. That's made it an urgent issue for some leading campaigns to try to siphon support from lower-performing candidates. According to the New York Times, the Biden campaign recently tried to form an alliance with the Klobuchar campaign - an entreaty the Klobuchar campaign rejected.

Joe Biden

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And even if other candidates switched to Joe Biden, he also won't necessarily win.

But as these numbers show, if everyone got out of the progressive lane except for Bernie, and if everyone got out of the moderate lane except for Biden, the race would still be hopelessly split. Neither candidate would be better than the other at consolidating the party around them.

In reality, appealing to that half of respondents who would not have a preference between Biden and Sanders is the entire point of a campaign in the first place, and the lack of satisfaction is not specifically a cause of dissatisfaction. Respondents were not forced into selecting satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and neutrality likely explains why plenty of people are not yet game for a Biden or Sanders candidacy.

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This is still a primary with deep divisions between the major wings of the party. But lost in that shorthand is the idea that there's some significant overlap in appeal between the two men that is drowned out amid the punditry.

But there is some serious polarity. 32% of Sanders supporters said they explicitly would not be satisfied if Biden were the nominee. Among Biden supporters, 26% would not be happy were Sanders the winner of the primary. It's clear that if either candidate wants to break the deadlock, they still have a lot of work to do convincing Democratic voters that they're the right person to face Trump.

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